Christmas Light Debacle

Last night was attempt three at getting my Christmas lights to work. I’ve been trying to get this done without help from Matt. He said “I’m too busy keeping us out of the poor house to participate in decorating our house for Christmas”.

So… it’s all on me. I was excited, this would be the first time our house was lit up for Christmas… and everyone knows how much I love Christmas.

The weekend after Thanksgiving I had the Christmas music going and the wine was poured. I was happily decorating. After hours of work one side went dark after only 20 minutes. Drunk and infuriated, I went to bed.

Attempt two: I used two outlets for 5 strings. This would surely work I thought. I painstakingly untangled out of the fresh garland the strings that shorted.  I replaced them and it was on. The next night… darkness on one side, again.

Attempt three: I strung up a whole new brand of lights after the first (and second) LED saga. I thought I got a bad batch of bulbs. The new set was lit last night. In celebration we went to dinner at UMA’s.  On our return, one side was dark. I cried (I’m not kidding). Getting the lights up shouldn’t be this difficult, right?

I got some troubleshooting tips from my family at my sister’s annual Christmas party. Cousin Joe told me about The Christmas Light Keeper  and my other Cousin Joe said if my whole string is out, I probably blew the fuse in the string. He said “Replace the fuse in the string located in the plug”.

I gather the issue is the fuse but it’s perplexing,  I only have three strings on one outlet and it’s still blowing. How the hell do the people in Dyker Heights get 100’s of strings to work?! There’s an art to this and the lightbulb is not going on for me.

Tonight, I will try again. I will attempt to replace the fuses, I’m out of spare sets.

The upside to all this is that while googling “Christmas lights” I came across this cool website dedicated to the history of Lights (the first paragraph it a little disturbing, fyi). That site brought me to Jimonlight.com  another good one especially  for all you hardcore Christmas people. In detail, Jim outlines all the Christmas light varieties and styles.

I will update on this Christmas light debacle if  by the grace of God I get it working.